ESPERANTO AND ITS CRITICS

AN EXAMINATION OF SOME IDIST
OBJECTIONS

The object of this short tract is to show that the confident claims of Ido
to be in all respects an improvement on Esperanto are, from the linguistic
point of view, at least open to question, and, in the writer's opinion, in
several important particulars absolutely devoid of foundation.

The reluctance of Esperantists to throw open their periodicals to linguistic
controversies, and thus give a gratuitous advertisement to their detractors,
has frequently been misinterpreted as due to timidity or to a feeling of
misgiving as to the adequacy of the language they advocate. A sufficient answer
to this criticism is to be found in the detailed comparisons of Esperanto and
Ido made by prominent Esperantists like Kotzin with his Geschichte und
Theorie des Ido (Ader & Borel, Dresden), Aymonier in Essai sur la
dérivation comparée (Paris, 1921), Autour de l'Esperanto, and M.
C. Butler in a succinct but informative pamphlet published by the British
Esperanto Association; to all of these I acknowledge my indebtedness. It is
true that Esperantists as a body have not taken much interest in these
controversies, for experience has taught them the efficiency of Esperanto for
the purposes of everyday life.

The history of Esperanto as compared with that of its competitors shows a
faith in natural evolution as against forced growth by successive inoculations.
The Idists, on the other hand, have profoundly modified their draft scheme as
the result of a series of linguistic discussions in Progreso, and by
reference to an academy which, in the course of a few years, promulgated over
800 separate decisions. The discussions are not without value, but the fiats of
the academy are vitiated by its non-representative character, particularly in
respect of philology; its one distinguished philologist, Professor Jespersen,
was not infrequently out-voted, and finally the arbitrariness of many decisions
led to secessions. It was then felt necessary to stereotype Ido for a time even
in an admittedly imperfect form, and so a period of stability was instituted.
This is important, for it shows Ido forced by the logic of events into the
position of setting up a canon -- here the Ido of 1913 -- a case almost
precisely analogous to the voluntary acceptance by Esperantists of the much
maligned Fundamento. This Fundamento, the firm bond of union
of the Esperantists, is in the strictest sense the base or foundation, not the
whole edifice. Upon it already a considerable superstructure has been reared,
and gradual alterations have been effected to meet varying conditions. New
affixes like -aĉo, -ismo, (scientific) -oza, -iva, have come
into use, some like mis- and -enda are struggling for
recognition; or again it has been found necessary to make more precise
distinctions (prononci as against elparoli) or to eliminate
national peculiarities (aspekti for elrigardi). Even in the
phonology we find that the relatively difficult sound ĥ (German sound
in ach) is to a certain extent finding a competitor in k.
Several lists of new words have been published officially by the Linguistic
Committee -- but only after they have become truly international in usage and
shown to supply a strongly felt need. Some might quarrel with the rate at which
this registration work is accomplished, though it may be said that great
circumspection is essential; but evolution in actual international practice
would surely seem to be preferable to constant interference with the works from
without.

De Beaufront, the originator of Ido and leader of that movement, has not
followed up this peaceful and constant evolution, and so the comparative lists
of Esperanto and Ido words in his virulent pamphlets are very misleading. In
not a few cases Esperantists already make full use of the international root or
form given in the Ido column, and in many other cases the addition of an extra
root (from one or more of the Romance languages) is avoided so as not to add
new burdens to the nations of Eastern Europe and Asia. Lorenz holds up to
ridicule a sentence embodying an assertion on some technical matter, stated to
have been composed by an Esperantist (in the early days) entirely out of the
roots contained in the Fundamental Dictionary. But Esperantists have
long ago ceased to indulge seriously in such tours de force and now
adopt whole-heartedly the neatest international stems available. And here I
would add that Esperanto is prepared to utilise the experience gained by the
other projects -- Ido, Esperantida, Occidental, etc. Why not? No International
Language has sprung fully armed from the head of Zeus -- it is more like the
infant Herakles, and should be well fed to enable it to perform its manifold
labours.

The most insidious danger to the early progress of an International Language
is dissipation of energy and disintegration into dialects. The crew must work
together until the ship is brought safely to port -- then, and not until then,
the thorough overhauling and repainting can begin.

In the following paragraphs certain disruptive criticisms of Esperanto will
be examined. An endeavour will be made to present the facts and principles
dispassionately and objectively. Such a pamphlet as De Beaufront's Facilité
respective de l'Esperanto et de l'Ido cannot serve as a model in this
respect, for its heated presentment, its all too tendentious collection of
isolated facts, and its deliberate glossing over the existence in Ido itself of
certain forms and functions which it sharply attacks in Esperanto, put it out
of court as an instrument of scientific inquiry.

THE ALPHABET

The chief point of attack is here the use of circumflexed letters in
Esperanto. Ido has no supersigns; Esperanto and Occidental have a few. The punctum
saliens is the value to be given to j. Esperanto, like the
alphabet of the Société Phonetique Internationale and all the languages of
Central and Eastern Europe, employs j with the value of consonantal or
semi-consonantal i. The drawback of not having supersigns is that it
leads Ido to perpetrate forms like yuro, yusta; kajo, sonjo, jemar,
which are less transparent than juro, justa; kaĝo, sonĝo, ĝemi. A Neither Esperanto nor Ido deem it
necessary to sacrifice in every case practical convenience to phonetic rigour
-- both, for instance, use the single symbol c to represent the
phonetic combination ts.B
But Ido goes much further: having already given a precise phonetic connotation
to s and to h, it has chosen to represent the phonetically
simple consonant [S] by sh and the group [tS] by ch.C Ido thus infringes an important principle,
that of maintaining unimpaired the phonetic value of a symbol once definitely
chosen. Esperanto's choice of ŝ for [S] is justified on the analogy of
s, and the choice of ĉ for [tS] on the analogy of c
for [ts]. Of course this same argument might be applied to justify the Ido use
of x for [ks] and [kz], D
and Esperantists might well consider the possibility of tolerating the use of
this international symbol side by side with its present digraphs. However, the Idist
objection to ks and kz on the score of the difficulty of
keeping them apart is not borne out in actual experience, and the
differentiation between a voiceless element [s] and a voiced element [z] in
this combination corresponds to a distinction observable in "natural"
languages (English exert compared with exercise). Against the
Ido sh it may be urged specifically that this is not an international
letter-group (German sch, French ch). Moreover, ch
also has variant values in English, French, and German. The Esperanto
supersigns no longer offer any serious difficulty to the printer, if we may
judge from the large and increasing number of printed publications (over 4000
to date), and they confer a certain individuality upon the written form of the
language and save no small amount of valuable space. If there were a widespread
and insistent desire for their supersession, the orthographic reforms, though
considerable, should not involve much more recasting than the comparatively
recent reforms in German and Welsh. De Saussure's Esperantida would appear to
point to a better way of reforming the alphabet than the Idist manipulations.

PRONUNCIATION

De Beaufront says that ojn, ajn cannot be pronounced without
dislocating the jaw. The truth of the matter is that the digraphs aj, oj,
and uj are pronounced as diphthongs, i.e. combinations of two vowels,
or of a vowel and semi-vowel, whereas in the French -aille quoted by
him we have a combination of vowel and open consonant. Aj is
pronounced as in English "die" and oj as in "boy."
At the beginning of a syllable j may be pronounced either as a
semi-vowel like English y in "yes," or with rather stronger
friction as in German "ja."

The "sc" group is kept in Esperanto for the sake of the written
form scienco, sceptro, etc. Its pronunciation (s- ts) is familiar to
Russians and Germans (latter not mentioned by De Beaufront); it is quite
readily learnt by English students, for it occurs in beasts, rusts,
etc. If assimilation sometimes occurs in rapid conversation, no bones will be
broken. But it is not easy to get to like the Ido forms cienco, ceptro,
ecitar (to excite), konciar (to be conscious).

STRESS

Esperanto invariably stresses the penultimate syllable (like Polish and, in
most cases, Welsh). No monotony results, for, as the words contain a varying
number of syllables, the intervals between two consecutive stresses vary also.
It is mere bluff on De Beaufront's part to suggest that Esperanto breaks this
rule when it permits the elision of the final "o," as in famili'
for familío (replaced by an apostrophe), in poetry. E

Almost from the start, Ido showed one exception to this rule of penultimate
stress, viz. in the infinitive of the verb. After much fumbling it has
introduced further complications: thus we find muzéo but ménuo,omnadía but lúndia, and we get very unfamiliar stressing in révuo,
rendévuo, egóismo (apparently pronounced with oy), enérgio,
avénuo -- surely an effective "tu quoque" argument to meet the
Idist criticism of the Esperanto familio, sekretario, pronounced with
the regular penultimate stress. In De Beaufront's Manual of Ido the
English word vein is translated veino, but no indication is
given in the alphabet that ei is to be pronounced as a diphthong and
not as two separate syllables.

EUPHONY

It is hard to convince Idists that Esperantists do not spend most of their spare
time twittering phrases like ĉiuj tiuj kiuj, but I have never yet met
an unbiased listener who found a speech or song or recitation in Esperanto
other than very euphonious. The prevalence of the Greek finals oj and aj,1 the easy rhythm produced by the penultimate
stress, and the profusion of full-toned vowels contribute to this favourable
acoustic impression. Esperantists are fully justified in adducing the testimony
of Italian speakers of Esperanto as to its phonetic richness and sonority.
Still more striking is the skilful adaptation of the intricate Welsh
"cynghanedd" metre to Esperanto verse by no less an authority than
Professor T. Gwynn Jones in the March number of Literaturo (1923), the
effect being achieved with great success.

Ido, on the other hand, has a stressed infinitive ending, which makes it
somewhat jerky, and throws the emphasis on to the relatively unimportant part
of the word. A more serious defect is the superabundance of sibilants in such
words as exkuzez, desavantajizata, rekonstitucesez, limitizesir,
desespereskis. Neither Esperanto nor Esperantida show these monstrosities.

THE ARTICLE

Neither Esperanto nor Ido employ an indefinite article. Esperanto has only
one invariable definite article, la, whereas Ido has, in addition to la,
the forms lo (as in lo bona = the good, in contradistinction
to la bono = the good man, q.v. infra) and le to
express the plural before an adjective unaccompanied by a noun (Ido having
gradually "reformed away" the adjective inflexion). This
multiplication of the Ido article is a striking example of the process of
"robbing Peter to pay Paul." Simplification of grammatical inflection
has very definite limits, and it is always well to count the cost.

THE ACCUSATIVE CASE

It is quite true that the use of the accusative requires some study on the
part of the English, Scandinavians, Romance nations, and the Chinese, and that
the ending is sometimes inadvertently dropped in conversation. But the issue
between Esperanto and Ido is not as to the absolute desirability of having the
case, but simply as to whether it is better to lay down a rule of universal
application (Esperanto standpoint) and tacitly condone minor breaches in
colloquial speech, or provide for the use of the inflection only in a specified
contingency (Ido). It is not fair of De Beaufront to claim that the accusative
makes Esperanto harder than Ido, while he still retains the case at all -- at
any rate it is just as hard for an Englishman to grasp the use of the accusative
before the noun as after. On the whole -- for the written form at any rate --
the balance of advantage would seem to be with the regular employment of the
accusative. In Esperanto it forms a most convenient general oblique case,
applied like the Latin, Greek, and German accusatives to define periods or
points and more especially direction in space. Esperantisms like domen,
"homewards," anglen, "into English," are very neat
and concise, like the Latin Romam ire, etc. Its use does away with the
necessity for clumsy compound prepositions like the Ido aden.F

The general question of the use of the accusative is closely bound up with
that of word-order. Experience has shown what a precious boon to the speaker
and writer an elastic word-order is. A certain irreducible minimum of
inflection is not too heavy a price for a privilege which enables a writer to
give more relief to his leading ideas and to attain more satisfactory rhythmic
effects.

THE PER80NAL PRONOUNS

In one pamphlet De Beaufront twits Esperanto because its personal pronouns mi,
vi, li, etc., have the same ending i as the infinitive. This is a
mere quibble, for mi is itself a " root," not a root +
ending. The Esperanto pronouns have the great advantage of uniformity of
character -- a boon to the speaker. Ido may possess a certain advantage (with
its variety me, vu, ni, etc.) to the listener if his interlocutor is
an indistinct speaker. Esperanto, while possessing a 2nd person singular ci,
commonly employs (like English, French, German) the plural pronoun vi
even to denote a single individual. Ido definitely employs vu for the
singular and vi for the plural, making use of the circumstance that i
is its common plural mark. Experience shows that the employment of a single
form like vi for both numbers leads to no more ambiguity in Esperanto
than the use of you in English -- and Esperanto has, in addition, the
safeguard of a plural inflection to be added to any noun or adjective referring
to the pronoun. Ido has a convenient form for the notion which is expressed in
English by he or she, i.e. a sexless personal pronoun --
possibly Esperanto might some time evolve a form should the need become acute. G Some speakers of Romance languages seem to
miss in Esperanto any equivalent to their 3rd person plural feminine pronouns,
like elles, etc. This is a gender distinction foreign to the Germanic,
Celtic, and Finno-Ugrian languages, but no doubt such a form could, if desired,
be added to the Esperanto system. De Saussure's suggestion for using iŝi
(as a feminine) is worth considering.

The Ido rule concerning the use of the accusative ending with the pronoun (lin
me vokis but me il vokis, both in the sense of "I called
him") is too finicking for an International Language, which should rather
proceed on broad and sweeping lines.

THE INFLECTION OF THE ADJECTIVE

Esperanto, in common with most of the European languages (Latin, Greek,
Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Rumanian, German, Dutch, Danish, Russian,
Polish, Celtic, Finnish, and Magyar), requires concord of the adjective with
the substantive qualified. While it is perfectly true that, from the point of
view of strict logic, there would not seem to be any necessity to repeat in the
adjective the expression of grammatical function already embodied in the noun,
cases may easily arise where adjectival inflection is the best means of
avoiding ambiguity. The English phrase, "The French (sing. or
plural) and German (sing. or plural) handbooks, approved by the
Academy," may be taken as typical of such ambiguities, which in
Esperanto are removed by the use of a singular or plural adjective to express
the idea intended. In spite of its vaunted precision Ido is helpless here, and
in other cases has either to adhere to a strict word-order or use a specific
form of the definite article. H

THE NUMERALS

The Ido habit of intercalating the conjunction e (=and) between the
units and tens, hundreds, etc., does not appeal to Esperantists, especially
when it results in the perpetration of such objectionable conglomerates as mil-e-oka-cent-e-dua-dek-e-tri.2 Presumably the use of e in dek-e-tri,
"thirteen," is due to a desire to knit the two numerals closer
together. But Esperanto need not fear any ambiguity by preserving its simpler
form dek tri for "thirteen," for this would be
differentiated from "ten, three" in writing by the omission of any
mark of punctuation, and in speech either the dek or the tri
would be given a preponderating "unifying" stress when the
combination denotes "thirteen," whereas both dek and tri
would be pronounced with equal or level stress if they were simply
co-ordinated.

THE INFINITIVE

Esperanto has but one ending, -i; Ido has three (according to
tense), -ar, -or, -ir. Ido has the advantage of a certain conciseness
in its expression of the future and past infinitive, but it is questionable
whether this complication is worth while. The future infinitive is mostly
superfluous -- when used after verbs of hoping, expecting, etc., it is
particularly so, for the idea of futurity is already contained in the verb, and
in other cases (not frequent) the Esperanto use of the auxiliary verb with
participle (like English, French, German, etc.) is more natural to the
majority. Esperanto might perhaps with advantage permit the use of the
infinitive after such prepositions as post, sen, antaŭ, perI -- a tolerance which would not offend any
principle of the Fundamento.

ADDITIONAL SYNTHETIC TENSES IN IDO

The short Ido forms amabis, "I had loved," amabos,
"I shall have loved" -- passive amesas, etc. -- are
innovations worth consideration for use side by side with the periphrastic (and
more exact) forms. A synthetic passive form in ati, iti, has been
advocated by some Esperantists, but not adopted. J It is significant, however, that De
Beaufront himself warns Idists against using -ab and -es
together, e.g. amesabos, "shall have been loved."

THE CORRELATIVES

The classification of the correlative particles (like where, there,
everywhere, nowhere, etc.) into a regular system, by virtue of which the
learner of Esperanto can, by combining five initial syllables, ki-, ti-,
i-, ĉi-, neni-, with nine final syllables, -a, -e, -o, -u; -al, -am,
-et, -es, -om, rapidly acquire a precise knowledge of forty-five words,
once called forth the unstinted praise of the French philosopher Couturat in
his unregenerate pre-Ido days. The attacks made by the Idists upon this system
have been concentrated mainly on the following points: -- (1) That such a
system is essentially artificial and does not conform to international usage,
wherefore Ido has recourse to forms like kande and ube for when
and where; (2) that the outward resemblances of the systematised forms
would lead to confusion in practice, and that greater acoustic differentiation
is necessary; (3) that in any case -e, being the generalised adverbial
ending, should stand for the notion of "manner" and not
"place." Taking these points seriatim, Esperantists could reply: (1)
That Dr. Zamenhof is merely -- as in the selection of the endings -o
and -a for the substantive and adjective (a procedure adopted by Ido
as well) -- generalising and standardising tendencies already at work in
"natural" languages (Lat. quum, tuum; ubi, ibi; Engl. when,
then; where, there, etc.), and that after all neither kande nor ube
exist in those actual forms in any language outside Ido; K (2) that in practice confusions are
practically unknown, and the forms are easily assimilated and properly
classified by the memory; (3) that it is true that in kie, etc.,
Esperanto has limited the general adverbial significance of -e to one
particular adverbial relation, viz. place, just as Ido (in common with Esperanto)
would not hesitate to use a form like hejme for "at home."
On the positive side Esperantists have abundant evidence of the facilitation of
study by these regular series, which are stated to appeal especially to
students in the Far East. L

Perhaps a word might be apposite here in criticism of the argument of
"artificiality," which is frequently raised like a smoke-screen to
keep at a distance all advocates of neutral languages. Words are essentially
conventional marks -- their connection with the thing designated is indirect,
in so far as what they symbolise is the thought or idea of the thing. In the
"natural" languages no difference in treatment is accorded to words
(like gas) which we can trace to a single originator and to those whose
origins are lost in antiquity. Thus we form gasefy, gaseous, the
German vergasen, entgasen, etc. To the vast majority of Esperanto
students it does not matter at all whether the syllable ĉi- in the
correlative series is artificial or not -- it is at any rate shorter and neater
than omni. All that can be legitimately demanded of an International
Language in this connection is that it should make use of such mnemonic aids as
it finds will help a considerable number of its students.

USE OF AFFIXES AS INDEPENDENT WORDS

In English we sometimes speak of the -isms and -ologies;
Esperanto generalises this usage to include all affixes. But it is quite beside
the mark when De Beaufront, in his very disingenuously compiled comparative
lists, tries to make it appear that Esperantists are obliged to use
these highly generalised and often make-shift words in lieu of international
roots. Esperanto can say both eco (suffix of quality used
independently) and kvalito, inda and digna, etc. M Why the Idists should go out of their way
expressly to forbid the independent use of the affixes is not clear, for they
are ready to hand and easily remembered.

PRINCIPLES OF DERIVATION

De Saussure and Aymonier have demonstrated the groundlessness and practical
inconvenience of the fundamental postulate of word-building in Ido, viz. the principle
of reversibility. Esperanto forms from the root kron, "a
crown," the verb kroni, just as English forms "to
crown," French "couronner," and German "krönen." Ido
will not permit the direct derivation of a verb kronar; on the ground
that, if one reconverts the verb into a substantive, the latter must bear the
meaning of the action expressed by the verb, viz. "coronation." In
consequence of this "logical" demand, which has no warrant in the
facts of the living languages, Ido is driven to such clumsy expedients as kronizar,
adresizar, sudorifar, martelagar, as against the simple and more eloquent kroni,
marteli, etc. Esperanto quite legitimately expresses
"coronation," "hammering," by kronado, martelado,
using for the purpose a suffix indicating action. 1

Ido has further raised gratuitous difficulties for itself by its refusal to
accept the easy Esperanto mode of forming adjectives direct from substantive
roots by the simple addition of a. In Esperanto one need never
hesitate as to which suffix to employ: thus "theatrical" is "teatra,"
"harmonious" is "harmonia," "rocky" is "roka."
Ido insists upon tacking on -ala, -oza-, or -iva to
derivative adjectives, providing subordinate rules for special cases. While one
may readily admit the value of such suffixes for scientific purposes (Esperanto
has already widely adopted -oza and -iva in technical
terminology), the continual and compulsory use of these elements renders Ido
intolerably stilted and pedantic as a medium of everyday conversation, and the
precise connotation of these suffixes is a matter of such extreme delicacy that
Idists make frequent mistakes in their employment, and on one occasion at any
rate even Couturat was at a loss. Moreover, Ido is not consistent in itself,
for if ruina = "that which is a ruin," then mea
ought to be "that which is I." But mea is used, as a matter
of fact, for the possessive adjective "my," which by the rules of
Ido, if logically applied, should certainly be rendered by the ludicrous form meala.

The one case in which Ido dispenses with a suffix and Esperanto uses one is
to the disadvantage of Ido. In Esperanto la bono means "the
good," a meaning logically deducible from the combination of the adjective
root bon and the substantive ending -o (which in its general
meaning denotes any "entity" or "fact"). To Ido la bono
means "the good man" -- an altogether arbitrary restriction of the
function of the ending -o to the sense of "person." N

THE CONTEXT

The gibe that Esperantists appeal to the context when challenged as to the
precise meaning of a term is beside the point, when it is realised that no
language (Ido included) could possibly express every component of an idea without
becoming intolerably clumsy. A "steamship" in both Esperanto and Ido
is a combination between "steam" and "ship," leaving to the
hearer the task of establishing the exact relation of "steam" to
"ship"; it would be foolish to insist upon vapormovŝipo.
Economy of means is surely laudable if the effect is satisfactory. In the
spoken language especially the "context of situation" is a very
relevant factor.

THE VOCABULARY

Ido certainly possesses a bigger stock of root-words than Esperanto, O but in many cases is swollen rather than
enriched by its additions. Kotzin instances a number of hardly distinguishable
synonyms employed, e.g. docar, instruktar; silencar, tacar; lular, bersar ;
rivero, fluvio, and many more. Esperanto prefers on the whole to express
its nuances by judicious combinations of its elements, in a manner analogous to
Greek and German. The Oriental in particular appreciates a language in which
from knowing, say, the root for "good," he can form "bad,"
"evil," "to improve," etc. The "contrary " words
(Esp. mal) may not be inviting at first sight, but they are a good
labour-saving device. Ido looks easier to read for the Western European with
some knowledge of more than one language, but we must not forget that the
International Language must help the non-linguist and non-European as well.

According to Rule 16 of Zamenhof's Grammar, any demonstrably
international 4 word can be admitted into Esperanto,
provided that it is assimilated to Esperanto orthography, so that no objection
need be raised on principle to a number of Ido neologisms which are not yet in
current use among Esperantists. Such Ido roots as ariv-, important,
asembl-, etc., might well be considered for use concurrently with the
ordinary Esperanto derivatives and new shades of meaning distinguished. But in
view of the frequency of "overlapping" of synonymous renderings in
different languages and the comparative rarity of actual equivalence of
definition, great caution is required in expanding the present very handy
vocabulary. P

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

Esperanto has the advantage over Ido in so far as its grammar consists of
clear-cut rules of universal application. Its retention of an accusative or
oblique case and of adjectival concord give it a freedom of movement paralleled
only in the classical languages. Ido, while professing to simplify its grammar
by the elimination of inflections, lets these in by the back door by legislating
for particular cases.

Ido would seem at first sight to have a more convenient though by no means
perfect alphabet, and wears a more familiar look -- to the Western European,
especially if he knows Latin. But Esperanto imposes a far lighter burden on the
non-linguist in Central and Eastern Europe and the races of the Far East. That
the Ido vocabulary is 91 per cent French is of little aid here -- far better
the Esperanto principle of efficiency with economy, or of multem in parvo,
i.e. the fullest employment for ordinary purposes of a comparatively small
stock of easily memorised and easily managed elements. Ido has certainly been
far too apt to forget the man in the street while catering for the scholar.

That Esperanto may be further refined and enriched no thoughtful Esperantist
would deny. In the preface to his Fundamento Dr Zamenhof pointed the
way when he said: "If any authoritative central institution finds that
this or the other word or rule in our language is too inconvenient, it must not
remove or change the said form, but may propose a new form which it will
recommend to be used parallel with the old form (until usage decides)."
That is the way of sanity and sound evolution. To attempt to impose the Ido
reform scheme upon the thousands of people who in their daily lives use
Esperanto easily and fluently and find it answers all the purposes for which
they require it would be a patent absurdity. What Esperanto can learn from Ido
it will learn and assimilate for its own purposes; but in the writer's view
such adjustment is not likely to touch the bases of the language at all. Q In important particulars Ido is
retrograde, and careful examination of both languages does not lend support to
the view that, as a whole, Ido represents an advance upon Esperanto. From the
point of view of the International Language movement generally the launching of
Ido and the manner of its presentment to the public have been a psychological
blunder of the first magnitude. Until something much better than Ido comes
their way, Esperantists will not be tempted to desert a language for which they
have conceived a real affection and which they have learned to handle with skill,
grace, and power.

W. E. COLLINSON,Professor of German and Hon. Lecturerin Comparative Philology, University ofLiverpool.

Author's Footnotes

1 It has been remarked that from a musical point of
view this compares very favorably with the Ido i.2 In
Esperanto: mil okcent dudek tri.3 De
Saussure has pointed out that ad is used in two ways: (a) With a
verbal root to express duration: skribi, skribadi; (b) with a
substantival root to express the verbal idea: krono, "crown"
; kroni, "to crown"; kronado,
"coronation." Perhaps its function may best be grasped if formulated
in a negative way; according to this view, ad expresses rather the
imperfective "aspect of verbal action, whereas the "inchoative" affix
is -iĝ, the "ingressive" is ek-, the
"effective" is el-, or is inherent in the verbal root itself
(cf. dormadi, dormiĝi, ekdormi, eldormi).4
The criterion of internationality should be applied with greater caution than
is sometimes the case in the word-lists of Ido and Occidental. In the first
place, a distinction should be made between Latin, Greek, and other derivatives
which are in daily use in most European languages (telephone, menu,
etc.), and those which are familiar to a small group only (concinnity,
syncretism, etc.). Obviously there is a place for both classes of words in
an International Language, but the second class had better be adopted in their
technical senses and not used as a basis for the roots in everyday use. Secondly,
the same basic word may occur in a number of different languages, but in such
widely variant phonetic forms as to deprive its internationality of any
particular mnemonic value. Thirdly, where the same word has acquired widely
different senses in different languages, its adoption as a root in an
International Language may create new difficulties. Esperanto has the advantage
of being in the main the product of an individual mind which, while taking full
advantage of the international roots available, did not proceed on rigid
mechanical lines, but selected and assimilated those elements which were
susceptible of combination into an artistic and harmonious whole.

Editor's Comments

A In my personal opinion, the absolute value of this
criticism is suspect, and it is deserving of use only at those times
that your friendly neighborhood Idist chooses to criticize Esperanto's
vocabulary on such grounds as that of "crippling" (i.e., losing an
unnecessary vowel or syllable) -- a "tu quoque", as the author later
classifies such arguments. B
It is necessary to point out here that in both Esperanto and Ido c
represents a single phoneme, not a combination of two separate phonemes. C
Again, the sound represented in Esperanto by ĉ and in Ido by the
digraph ch is a single phoneme, not a combination of two separate
phonemes. D
Note, however, that [ks] and [kz], unlike [ts] and [tS], are in fact in each
case two phonemes pronounced sequentially. E
The elided final -O may be considered a "silent" vowel. F
It is worth noting that doubled prepositions are not uncommon in Esperanto,
where the use of the final -N is inappropriate; e.g. elinter.
In Esperanto, the -N of movement after a preposition of location (e.g.
en) can also legitimately be replaced by a compound preposition (alen),
but this, perhaps for reasons of economy or efficiency, is never done. G
Collinson here overlooks the fact that the third person neuter pronoun ĝi
also fulfills this purpose, possibly because there is no similar custom for
using it in English. H
Collinson wrote this pamphlet long before Claude Shannon's Information Theory
had made the term redundancy popular. The Esperanto adjective
agreement restores redundancy lost because of the invariability of the verb
form in each tense (cp. English is vs. are); Ido suffers a
similar loss of redundancy in its verbs, but makes no effort to restore it
elsewhere. I
Such usage is not unusual in the year 2001. J
The forms mentioned by Collinson (sometimes referred to as "synthetic verb
forms") have not been advocated but are inherent in the
structure of Esperanto. That they are rarely used is primarily due to a lack of
perceived need for them. K
Dr. Zamenhof did not, after all, invent the correlative table, but
simply completed it; similar tables exist, usually in incomplete form,
in most ethnic languages. I was surprised to find, in YAMASAKI Seikô's Enkonduko
en la japanan, that the first appendix consisted of ... the Japanese
table of correlatives ... L
Worth mentioning here is Thorndyke's experiment at Columbia, under the auspices
of the International Auxiliary Language Association, which demonstrated that,
at least for active use, Esperanto's tabular system was significantly easier to
learn than Ido's more "natural" system.M
For the record, given these choices eco is used at least as much as kvalito,
and digna is very rare indeed compared to inda. Given the
option, actual speakers of the language seem to prefer the shorter,
affix-based terms.N
These and similar considerations lead me to the conclusion that, where the
terms "noun, adjective, verb root" in Esperanto simply describe the semantics
of the root, the same terms with respect to Ido describe the intended
function of the root -- a much more restrictive and less flexible system,
overall.O
Whether this remains true in 2001 is open to question; see e.g. the Plena
Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto. The number of official roots and
particles in Esperanto, however, remains relatively small, at about a quarter
the content of the named volume.P
Of the three possible borrowings mentioned by Collinson, neither ariv-
nor important- is used, even at this late date; asembl- does
find some use, but in a context that Collinson could not have foreseen, i.e.
among programmers of computer "assembly language".Q
As of 2001, Ido's influence on Esperanto appears to consist of a small number
of words adopted officially in the 1960s or 1970s, a perhaps somewhat larger
number of neologisms proposed by certain authors but not used by anyone else,
and the now-official suffix -end. The influence of Ido, as Collinson
predicts, does not appear to have affected the basic structure of Esperanto.